Seeing in the Boston bombing though the filter of preexisting prejudice

I wasn’t going to comment on yesterday’s deadly Boston Marathon bombing until more of the facts were known, but, as I’m sitting here tonight, reading the analysis of folks like Alex Jones, who thinks that it was an inside job perpetrated by the government, and Fox News contributor Erik Rush, who thinks that it’s clearly the work of Muslims, all of whom we should now round up and exterminate, I feel obliged to remind folks that this didn’t happen on the anniverary of the first day American boots touched Kuwaiti soil, but on the holiday known as Patriots’ Day. And, if that sounds familiar, it might be because it’s the same day, in 1995, that anti-government crusader and gun dealer Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168. This could, of course, just be a coincidence, and I hesitate to even bring it up, but, as others are advocating for the murder of all American Muslims, I think it’s at least worth pointing out that this could very well be the work of a home-grown terrorist seeking to make a statement on Tax Day, not too far from the birthplace of the American revolution. Or, for that matter, what we saw yesterday could have been the work of a mentally ill individual with a grudge against the Marathon. The fact is, we just don’t know. And it really doesn’t help to speculate at this point.

Speaking of Muslim extremists, the Pakistani Taliban, who were quick to claim credit for the 2010 Time Square bomb, have come out and said that this wasn’t their doing. “Wherever we find Americans we will kill them,” they said in their statement, “but we don’t have any connection with the Boston explosions.” And, as of right now, it doesn’t look as though there’s much to suggest a Muslim connection. A young Saudi man, who was wounded at the bomb site, was questioned by police, and consented to have his apartment searched, but it looks now as though he’s not presently a suspect.

I know that people everywhere are anxious to use this horrific event to confirm their preexisting prejudices, whether they be against Muslims or the so-called Patriot Movement, but I’d like to think that we could manage a bit of self restraint, and see how the investigation plays out. I think we owe it to the victims of the bombing to do at least that much.

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The Oklahoma City Bombing occurred on April 19, 1995, and was the anniversary of when the Waco siege ended, and also the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which is known as the start to the revolutionary war on April 19, 1775. Even Tim McVeigh said the Oklahoma City Bombing was in response to the Waco siege and that he picked April 19 specifically because of that day and also the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The date of the Boston Marathon Bombing, while I don’t think it was an inside job or conspiracy, could have something to do with Patriot’s Day in Boston, which does seek to sart to celebrate the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which is near Boston. But no, the Boston Marathon Bombing did not occur on the same day as the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Patriot’s Day is April 19, but it is observed on the third Monday of April in MA. Patriot’s Day was observed on April 17, 1995, while the OKC bombing was on Wednesday April 19. Not exactly the same day.

It’s a bit confusing as Patriots’ Day is celebrated on different days in different states. For the most part, as I understand it, it’s celebrated on April 19. And the Oklahoma City bombings took place on April 19, 1995. In Massachusetts, however, it’s celebrated on the third Monday in April, which is the day that the Boston Marathon attack took place. The following is from Wikipedia.

As Alex Altman of Time noted on Twitter, “Today is Patriots’ Day, which has significance for militia movement. McVeigh bombed Murrah Bldg on Patriots’ Day in 1995.” Patriots’ Day, a civil holiday in Massachusetts, commemorates those battles outside Boston that sparked the American Revolution. The holiday is now celebrated on the third Monday of April, though the battles actually took place on April 19, meaning the two dates are often conflated.

In 1993, he drove to Waco, Texas during the Waco Siege to show his support. At the scene, he distributed pro-gun rights literature and bumper stickers, such as “When guns are outlawed, I will become an outlaw.” He told a student reporter:

“The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.”

For the five months following the Waco Siege, McVeigh worked at gun shows and handed out free cards printed up with Lon Horiuchi’s name and address, “in the hope that somebody in the Patriot movement would assassinate the sharpshooter.” (Horiuchi is an FBI sniper and some of his official actions have drawn controversy, specifically his shooting and killing of Randy Weaver’s wife while she held an infant child.) He wrote hate mail to the sniper, suggesting that “what goes around, comes around,” and he later considered putting aside his plan to target the Murrah Building to target Horiuchi, or a member of his family instead.

McVeigh spent more time on the gun show circuit,[when?] traveling to 40 states and visiting about 80 gun shows. McVeigh found that the further west he went, the more anti-government sentiment he encountered, at least until he got to what he called “The People’s Socialist Republic of California.” McVeigh sold survival items and copies of The Turner Diaries. One author said:

“In the gun show culture, McVeigh found a home. Though he remained skeptical of some of the most extreme ideas being bandied around, he liked talking to people there about the United Nations, the federal government and possible threats to American liberty.”

McVeigh and Nichols grew closer after McVeigh’s discharge from the Army. In December 1991, Nichols invited McVeigh to join him in Michigan and help him out selling military surplus at gun shows. For the next three years, McVeigh stayed with Nichols off and on. On April 19, 1993, Nichols was watching TV with McVeigh at the Nichols’ farmhouse in Michigan when the ATF, Army and FBI attacked the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. When the compound went up in flames, McVeigh and Nichols were enraged and began to plot revenge on the federal government. In the fall of 1993, Nichols and McVeigh, who were living at the farm, became business partners, selling weapons and military surplus at gun shows. For a while, they lived an itinerant life, following the gun shows from town to town.

The horrific bombings of the Boston Marathon produced inspiring images of a spirited, brave Boston refusing to be cowed. Some spectators surged forward toward the danger to apply tourniquets, offer first aid, share blankets, and later to give blood, for the victims.

President Obama followed the crisis from its first moments and came out promptly to caution against fruitless speculation as to the perpetrators as well as solemnly to vow that they will be held accountable. (He has a certain track record in that regard.)

The idea of three dead, several more critically wounded, and over a 100 injured, merely for running in a marathon (often running for charities or victims of other tragedies) is terrible to contemplate. Our hearts are broken for the victims and their family and friends, for the runners who will not run again.

There is negative energy implicit in such a violent event, and there is potential positive energy to be had from the way that we respond to it. To fight our contemporary pathologies, the tragedy has to be turned to empathy and universal compassion rather than to anger and racial profiling. Whatever sick mind dreamed up this act did not manifest the essence of any large group of people. Terrorists and supremacists represent only themselves, and always harm their own ethnic or religious group along with everyone else.

Jesus Christ, Robert. What was that? I hope you’re sharing that to illustrate the terrifying depths to which American paranoia has sunk, and not because you actually really believe that Monday’s events were created on a Hollywood set, with actors playing the parts of victims.

It is hard to imagine the depth of anger and hatred that would drive someone to maim and kill innocent participants and spectators who had gathered for what seems to be a totally harmless and apolitical event.

Nearly as hard to imagine is why so many people seem to feel perfectly entitled to attempt to use it as a platform to promote their own political/social agendas — be it anti-Muslim, anti-Obama, anti-right, anti-left … or even to promote the idea that all major “news” events are actually staged in Hollywood with the principals played by well-known actors.

Do people really need to be reminded that there are families still grieving for lost loved ones who have not yet been buried, as well as victims who are still fighting for their lives and/or dealing with horrific physical and emotional injuries?

At this point, nobody yet knows yet who did this — or why. These are many legitimate questions related to this even, and as details emerge, they are worthy of thoughtful discussion and even debate.

But until then, I fail to understand why every crackpot/attention-whore with a Twitter account and an itchy finger feels the need to try to get their “15 minutes” by interjecting themselves — and their hateful conspiracy theories — into this awful story. Do such people really have no sense of shame?

People feel powerless in instances like this, and they regain power buy imposing some sense of structure on top of it. I think that accounts for a lot of it. Also, though, a lot of folks just see an opportunity to sell books and grow their Twitter followings. They’re vultures.

If you really believe that Kenny “Footloose” Loggins is a government agent engaged in a plot to trick the American people into believing that a terrorist act was perpetrated in Boston, you should be locked up somewhere. I’m generally compassionate when it comes to the mentally ill, but there’s a line.

Kenny Loggins is a fake, name, psydenem owned by the music industry. The character that plays him, is also playing the Doctor.
That actor has played other characters in other fake Events.
Go to Ed Chiarini Facebook or Wellaware1.com
Do some hard research and understand the facts and connecting of dots.
Why do you think, the world is so FUC^$D UP?

It looks like that Saudi man could have been our Richard Jewell. This is from the New Yorker.

A twenty-year-old man who had been watching the Boston Marathon had his body torn into by the force of a bomb. He wasn’t alone; a hundred and seventy-six people were injured and three were killed. But he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in “a startling show of force,” as his fellow-tenants described it to the Boston Herald, with a “phalanx” of officers and agents and two K9 units. He was the one whose belongings were carried out in paper bags as his neighbors watched; whose roommate, also a student, was questioned for five hours (“I was scared”) before coming out to say that he didn’t think his friend was someone who’d plant a bomb—that he was a nice guy who liked sports. “Let me go to school, dude,” the roommate said later in the day, covering his face with his hands and almost crying, as a Fox News producer followed him and asked him, again and again, if he was sure he hadn’t been living with a killer.

Why the search, the interrogation, the dogs, the bomb squad, and the injured man’s name tweeted out, attached to the word “suspect”? After the bombs went off, people were running in every direction—so was the young man. Many, like him, were hurt badly; many of them were saved by the unflinching kindness of strangers, who carried them or stopped the bleeding with their own hands and improvised tourniquets. “Exhausted runners who kept running to the nearest hospital to give blood,” President Obama said. “They helped one another, consoled one another,” Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, said. In the midst of that, according to a CBS News report, a bystander saw the young man running, badly hurt, rushed to him, and then “tackled” him, bringing him down. People thought he looked suspicious.

What made them suspect him? He was running—so was everyone. The police reportedly thought he smelled like explosives; his wounds might have suggested why. He said something about thinking there would be a second bomb—as there was, and often is, to target responders. If that was the reason he gave for running, it was a sensible one. He asked if anyone was dead—a question people were screaming. And he was from Saudi Arabia, which is around where the logic stops. Was it just the way he looked, or did he, in the chaos, maybe call for God with a name that someone found strange?

What happened next didn’t take long. “Investigators have a suspect—a Saudi Arabian national—in the horrific Boston Marathon bombings, The Post has learned.” That’s the New York Post, which went on to cite Fox News. The “Saudi suspect”—still faceless—suddenly gave anxieties a form. He was said to be in custody; or maybe his hospital bed was being guarded. The Boston police, who weren’t saying much of anything, disputed the report—sort of. “Honestly, I don’t know where they’re getting their information from, but it didn’t come from us,” a police spokesman told TPM. But were they talking to someone? Maybe. “Person of interest” became a phrase of both avoidance and insinuation. On the Atlas Shrugs Web site, there was a note that his name in Arabic meant “sword.” At an evening press conference, Ed Davis, the police commissioner, said that no suspect was in custody. But that was about when the dogs were in the apartment building in Revere—an inquiry that was seized on by some as, if not an indictment, at least a vindication of their suspicions.

“There must be enough evidence to keep him there,” Andrew Napolitano said on “Fox and Friends”—“there” being the hospital. “They must be learning information which is of a suspicious nature,” Steve Doocy interjected. “If he was clearly innocent, would they have been able to search his house?” Napolitano thought that a judge would take any reason at a moment like this, but there had to be “something”—maybe he appeared “deceitful.” As Mediaite pointed out, Megyn Kelly put a slight break on it (as she has been known to do) by asking if there might have been some “racial profiling,” but then, after a round of speculation about his visa (Napolitano: “Was he a real student, or was that a front?”), she asked, “What’s the story on his ability to lawyer up?”

By Tuesday afternoon, the fever had broken. Report after report said that he was a witness, not a suspect.

As a Bostonian born & bred, the Patriot’s Day connection made me immediately think that this was about the gun control legislation currently being debated in Congress. Just like how the ‘minutemen’ on the US/MX border spit in the face of American history by naming themselves that, the ‘Tea Party’ has spit in the face of Boston’s historical legacy by doing the same. & for the record, there have been far more acts of violence perpetrated in the US by Christian terrorists like McVeigh than any other group…

Also, if this latest attack was done, as some suggest, to make it easier for the evil government to take our guns, it didn’t work. The Senate voted today not to pass universal background checks. So, I guess the Obama needs to kill more children next time. Live and learn, right?

Dr. Bill,
Genetic Ear Biometrics has been used for over a century and used by nearly all nations to identify individuals. It is a Hardcore Science. This science is being used to identify individuals mostly from the same families that own this country and others at the very top. Staged events by the same elite families are being identified scientifically through ear biometrics. It is better than a finger print.

This is science. Ed Chiarini continues to expose the REAL FACTS in these BS events, that is to keep us going in circles and them in power.
We are living in a Hollywood Script.
He has exposed over 4000 individuals and has never been sued. Because he’s dead on.

Science and the internet will be the downfall of these scumbag, criminal, treasonous, ruling families.

There are some entertainingly bizarre claims on that weird site using the “science” of ear and boob freckle matching such as:
JIMI HENDRIX=MORGAN FREEMAN
JOHN LENNON=STEVE JOBS
BEAU BRIDGES=BILL HICKS=ALEX JONES
I hadn’t heard of the “Bill Hicks faked his death and is now asshole radio commentator Alex Jones” conspiracy but I have to admit there is a weird (visual) resemblance between them.

The chickens are coming home to roost, to paraphrase Malcolm X. Do Americans really think that foreign drone murders can be committed, by their president, in their name and with their tax dollars without some eventual retribution?

Even if the Waco explosion wasn’t terrorism, there’s cause for concern.

From Think Progress:

It’s impossible to know at this point whether unsafe workplace conditions were a direct cause of this disaster, but we do know that it was cited for failing to obtain or qualify for a permit in 2006 after a complaint of a strong ammonia smell, a smell that was reported to be “very bad last night.” The plant hasn’t been inspected in the past five years, and in fact only six Texas fertilizer plants were inspected in that time. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is chronically understaffed, which means that a given plant like West Fertilizer can only expect to get a state inspection once every 67 years on average.

Why don’t you do some real research and dig into, the people that get shown on TV and people being interviewed after this WAGO event, and see if they are the same family members and people; that are being used over and over in these events. If they aren’t, then it’s not a faked event. We don’t pull this stuff out of our ass. Connect the dots and you’ll have an answer.
If one and I repeat only 1 part of these events is not real, or faked, the whole event is a hoax. No need to fake anything if it’s real. Get your freakin blinder off. We are being spun in circles. Nothing ever gets fixed. Hellloooooo???

I had lunch today with a friend who is a Muslum Palistinian immigrant. He shared some of his thought process regarding moving around yesterday. He was walking around the back of the mall, realized he was in a low traffic, loading dock area, and purposely walked away from the wall where he could see that the security cameras would not lose sight of him. He wanted to be taped so false accusations would be harder to prove in case something happened.

When he got home from work to a news story that a local bridge was closed because of an potential bomb threat (turned out a tool box fell off a truck), he cringed because he had just ridden his bike across that bridge on his way home. He anticipated a visit from the law.

I hope the lunatics who carried out the bombing are domestic because when they are not, I don’t trust the military industrial complex to behave rationally and perform proper police action rather than use the incident as an opportunity to make war on another country.

For my buddy, though, it’s much more personal. He’s almost literally walking around with his hands in the air all the time and would only get relief if the perpetrators are caught and they turn out to be domestic.

Most Arabs are also white/caucasian. Why does race matter? I just hope they find the person(s) responsible, whatever their race or ethnicity, and I hope they are punished to sufficiently deter others from attempting similar acts.

If this whole ordeal really is the marathon bombers, it sounds like they got caught by a campus policeman at MIT trying to plant bombs on campus, killed him, and then fled. It would explain why they had bombs ready-made and on-hand to throw at the police officers during the car chase. RIP to the cop that found them, he or she probably saved a lot of students’ lives tonight.

Tammy, sorry for any confusion my comment may have caused. All I meant was that I found it odd on some level that I was hoping that it was a fellow countryman of mine who had set off the bombs. (When I said “white” I should have said “American.”) On the face of it, that’s such a weird thing, isn’t it? I mean, who “hopes” that it’s someone “like them” who’s out killing people? I think it’s just that I know Muslims, and don’t want to see them demonized in this country. I don’t want to feed the hate engine that keeps the Tea Party running. And it’s not that I necessarily wanted for it to have been the work of a conservative Christian. (I also have friends of that persuasion.) I just know that, if it was such a person, it wouldn’t do the same kind of damage to our society. The Christian community would quickly distance themselves from the person in question, as they always do. When it’s a Muslim, though, the equation is different. No one seems to accept the fact that there are Muslim fanatics, the same way there are Christian fanatics. They just see this monolithic Muslim entity that want’s us dead. And that’s what I meant by my comment.

In an email sent to supporters before Thursday night’s manhunt began in Massachusetts, the Family Research Council attempted to appropriate recent tragedies as arguments that support their social conservative positions. Referring to the Republicans’ Senate filibuster of the gun safety bill, FRC’s Tony Perkins claimed that tragedies like Newtown and Boston — as well as the shooting at its headquarters last summer — are the result of “sexual liberalism” and the lack of Christian influence on society:

In the aftermath of horrible tragedies like Newtown, the government desperately wants to do something–even if that something is the wrong thing. There seems to be this notion, at least among liberals, that more laws will protect us–but as we all witnessed in Boston, that isn’t necessarily the case. The government can’t make us safer until it recognizes that the problem isn’t the instruments of violence–but the environment of it. Stronger background checks wouldn’t have prevented the deaths of three people at the finish line on Monday, any more than it would have stopped Floyd Corkins from walking into our lobby and shooting Leo Johnson.

If Congress wants to stop these tragedies, then it has to address the government’s own hostility to the institution of the family and organizations that can address the real problem: the human heart. As I’ve said before, America doesn’t need gun control, it needs self-control. And a Congress that actively discourages it–through abortion, family breakdown, sexual liberalism, or religious hostility–is only compounding the problem.

Of course, some will say–and I agree–that transforming the culture is the church’s job. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place at the table for Christians in the gun debate. Not only did Jesus tolerate weapons, he instructed His disciples to buy them! In Luke 22:36, we read, “He said to them… if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” Jesus did rebuke Peter for being too quick on the draw (John 18:11), recognizing that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal-but spiritual.

The comment was sarcastic and in response to the incredulous assertion made by Mark that Sarah Palin was in some way responsible for the shooting. Thanks for digging up the link so that others can interpret the remark in context. You’re not the brightest bulb in the pack are you Peter? You just found out today that most Saudi’s are white. And your high level reading comprehension skills resulted in your confusion about the guy on the left in the picture. You’re embarrassed because of your own stupidity so you make a comment about me that is completely off topic – it’s called deflection and it isn’t working for you.

Can’t wait to see how they are going to spin the story when the news breaks about the identity and family relationships of their “Richard Jewell” – aka Abdul Rahman Ali al-Harbi. Why the hell was he in the U.S. on a student visa? Why did Michelle Obama visit him in the hospital after Homeland Security announced that he would be deported? Why did the President meet with a Saudi prince shortly after the Boston bombing? The real facts concerning this terrorist act on US soil are buried in 24/7 news reports of fluff and an army of bloggers implicating their political enemies.

For those of you who aren’t up to sped on your conspiracy theories, it would seem that the Boston Marathon was really perpetrated by a Saudi national friend of Obama’s, and the whole thing about the two brothers was just cover. Here’s America’s most trusted newsman Glenn Beck.

Jose “Joey” Leon, formerly of 11501 Moen St., Anaheim, California, is John Doe II of the Murrah bombing. He had been best friends with Timothy McVeigh. He gave his hat (white with a purple flame pattern, manufactured by Mopar) to Ramon, son of Margaret (elderly girlfriend of Joey’s uncle, Christopher Kintop), claiming that the FBI was looking for the hat. He removed his dragon tattoo. Joey was a serial child rapist, drug pusher, and neo-Nazi when he moved to Kingman for more money and prestige and to be among other Nazis. There, he attended a lecture by McVeigh on the Turner Diaries at Michael Fortier’s trailer home. Fortier was the capo of Mafia hit man, Sammy (the Bull) Gravano, handling his neo-Nazi narcotics cartel business in Las Vegas. Apparently McVeigh also worked for Gravano, recruiting other neo-Nazi gangs around the country by giving speeches.

Joey told me that he drove the bomb to the Murrah building, lit the fuse, but it doused going to the bomb from the cab, so he opened the back of the truck and relit the fuse. Joey had a lot of details about building the bomb at Geary Lake–he shoveled all of the manure for the bomb, and showed me his blisters.

Six months after Murrah, Joey carried out the Hyder derailing to divert 100 FBI agents from Kingman and attempt to pin guilt on other neo-Nazi gangs in the area. This also got Gravano off Joey’s back for fear that the FBI could be directed near Gravano’s operations.